Sourcing Great Products
We are committed to buying great products from suppliers who operate responsibly. Our aims are to ensure suppliers are subject to vetting for satisfactory ethics and procedures; to insist our supply chain partners sign up to the Carpetright Code of Conduct; and to ensure we act in a responsible and ethical manner. We also seek to ensure that our products come from factories that comply with local employment laws and that provide good working conditions for their staff.
All of our suppliers to our UK and RoI businesses have now signed up to compliance with our Ethical and Environmental policies, and this requirement is being rolled out in the Rest of Europe. We also have a Timber policy to ensure all timber floor covering products are manufactured from sustainable resources.
In the last year we have visited all new suppliers, inspected their premises and received written confirmation of their acceptance of our Code of Conduct.
During the course of the year we conducted a survey of our supplier base to ascertain their approach to renewable resources, renewable energy, recycling and the development of ‘green’ initiatives. We will actively encourage suppliers to develop
and produce ‘greener’ products either by using more recycled materials or by creating products that can be easily recycled. These developments will take time; as with all new technologies the initial costs are high, and we need to ensure that the products we offer provide value for money and are commercially viable.
Our aims in 2010/11 were:
- To continue to look for products and processes that are more environmentally friendly.
- To continue to offer a new environmentally friendly polyurethane underlay which now accounts for some 46% of our underlay sales
To contribute fully to both:
- Carpet Recycling UK – whose aims include encouraging recycling of carpets and stimulating end markets for carpet recycled materials;
- Carpet Material Action Plan – a stakeholder group of a government sponsored scheme. The plan is intended to assist the carpet industry in setting baselines and defining targets for improvements in resource efficiency and developing action plans to attain them.
Our Progress in 2010/12 was:
specifically ask for traditional rubber underlay. In addition to being more environmentally friendly, polyurethane is lighter and consequently easier for our customers, staff and fitters to handle.
Our targets for 2011/12 are:
- To continue to seek environmentally friendly products on commercially viable terms;
- To explore the potential to offer environmentally friendly products on our transactional website;
- To continue to work with Carpet Recycling UK to support their objectives; particularly to stimulate end markets for
carpet recycled materials; - To continue to work with the Flooring Sustainability Partnership to play our part in achieving the objectives of the
Resource Efficiency Action Plan; and - To work with those manufacturers who supply our European branches to ensure that they have signed up to our ethical,
environmental and timber policies.